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Anthrax Panic as U.S. Cases Rise
PARIS, Oct 16 (News Agencies) - Panic gripped the world Tuesday as a germ warfare attack in the United States triggered hoaxes and false alarms and police investigated suspect substances around the globe.
Fear was greatest in the United States, where investigators said anthrax had been sent to U.S. Senate majority leader Tom Daschle and a seven-month-old son of a television employee had fallen sick, the thirteenth person confirmed to have been exposed to the deadly bacterium.
While no anthrax cases have been confirmed beyond the U.S., envelopes containing mysterious white powder fed fears that terrorists would respond to the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan with a bio-terror offensive.
But early test results coming in from France, Germany, Britain and elsewhere in Europe seemed to indicate hoaxes, while public authorities cautioned against unnecessary panic.
Envelopes and packages containing powder or warnings of germ attacks were reported in Britain, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia and the Baltic States.
Letters sent to media organizations, Daschle's office in the U.S. Capitol and to the Microsoft office in Reno, Nevada, have been found to contain anthrax spores. Tests on other suspect letters in America are ongoing.
Initial checks elsewhere have so far revealed no anthrax, and no cases of infection have been confirmed in Europe - despite many frightened people being taken into hospital for checks - and the letters were sent haphazardly to government offices, media organizations, U.S. embassies and private firms.
In Scandinavia, many of the suspect letters were found to have been posted in Italy and one from South Korea, but in Italy itself, police said they had intercepted some sent from the U.S. and Britain.
Some of the letters were rapidly dismissed as cruel jokes, for example in Israel, where a prankster confessed to his colleagues after police and health officials arrived to seal the headquarters of the
Maariv daily newspaper.
Others were mistakes, such as in the Netherlands where a telecommunications firm sent out more than 3,000 incense cones as a gift to clients and many were crushed to dust during transit.
It was not clear if any of the other scares were the result of an organized campaign of intimidation.
But after the attacks in the U.S., where one journalist has died and a colleague is very sick, health care officials were taking the threat very seriously - in many cases evacuating buildings - and in some countries test results have yet to reveal whether any of Tuesday's scares was genuine.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said Tuesday it had placed its world surveillance network on a heightened state of alert.
In Britain, 13 employees at the London Stock Exchange were sent for tests after opening a parcel containing a suspect powder, while a large mail sorting office in the center of Liverpool, northwest England, was evacuated after white powder leaked out of a package.
But they turned out to be false alarms and the health ministry called for calm.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said of stock exchange incident: "There was nothing harmful."
A Department of Health spokesman said the package "does not contain any trace of anthrax"
Staff detained for medical observation in London and Liverpool were later discharged from hospital.
Dozens were kept under observation in hospitals in France after coming into contact with suspicious powders found in letters delivered in the mails.
A post office and a bank were closed in central Paris and dozens tested for anthrax.
But police ruled out the presence of anthrax in the scare that caused the closure of a post office off the Champs-Elysees and a bank elsewhere in the capital.
Officials in Rouen said around 40 people had been placed under observation after the discovery of an envelope containing white powder in a laboratory of the Shell oil company.
French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner said powders reported in previous days had been tested and did not contain anthrax.
"There is no danger in our country, not a single confirmed case [of anthrax] at the moment," Kouchner said.
A suspect cellophane package containing a magazine was sent to the COGEMA company at La Hague in northwestern France.
An employee spotted what he said was a suspicious white powder inside and 26 workers had to take precautionary decontamination showers.
The powder was sent for analysis but the company later said it was probably harmless and that the substance had been produced during the manufacturing process of the magazine.
A German government spokesman said a powder found in the mailroom of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's office had not contained the anthrax bacterium and had been sent for further analysis.
South Korea announced it would install X-ray machines in post offices to protect against possible bio-terrorist attacks, increase its stockpile of antibiotics and put a specialist team on 24-hour alert.
The U.S. ambassador to Malaysia said U.S. officials were working with the Kuala Lumpur government to investigate a letter that contained anthrax bacteria posted from Malaysia to a Microsoft office in Nevada.
Russia introduced a temporary ban on all animal products from Florida in response to the anthrax cases, ITAR-TASS reported citing an agriculture ministry document.
In Lisbon, Portuguese officials said tests for anthrax on suspicious substances had tested negative.
Likewise in Stockholm, four suspicious letters handed over to police and checked by army specialists after being delivered in four cities turned out to be harmless.
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